YouTube has a huge presence online today, and it’s not just for watching videos anymore. YouTube is actually the second largest search engine in the world, right behind Google. So don't avoid YouTube. Learn how to use YouTube to market your business successfully!

With 3 billion searches per month, if you aren’t taking advantage of YouTube, you might want to consider learning how you can use it to grow your business.

Nate Woodbury, founder of Be The Hero Studios, helps business owners create YouTube channels, not merely to call themselves YouTubers, but to grow their businesses and sell products.

He shares a lot of great strategies and tactics with us today. Even if you have no YouTube experience, I promise, you will learn something that you can apply to your own business.

Can Beginners Compete With Existing YouTubers?

The big difference between starting a YouTube channel today vs. when it first came out is that now you must have a strategy.

It is no longer enough to create videos and put them out there. You will not gain a big following by simply doing that.

YouTube requires a lot of the same strategies as any type of entrepreneurship. You need a large dose of stick-to-it-iveness and tenacity. You have to focus on creating quality content.

Nate has his own personal YouTube channel dedicated to teaching others how to make a YouTube channel thrive.

Creating YouTube Content With Keywords

It’s important to do keyword research before you begin filming because it’s much harder to go back and find keywords to fit the content you’ve already created.

Go deep, find very specific questions that people are searching for the answers to, and create videos that answer those questions.

SEMrush has a tool called Keyword Magic Tool, which is what Nate recommends to find the most effective keywords and phrases to gain traffic.

For someone serious about doing a daily YouTube channel, you can pay for a subscription to SEMrush for a month or so, and then cancel it.

Here's what you do: Look up a keyword and all your results will pop up. Then hit a button that says “Questions.” When you hit that button, it shows you the questions around that keyword people are asking.

Nate recommends picking questions that have between 10 and 100 searches per month.

The Power of Keywords for Gaining Traffic on YouTube

If you are doing videos this way, you will have a smaller percentage of viewers, but they will watch your video all the way through because it is specifically tailored to their needs.

The YouTube algorithm is going to see that it is a well-performing video with a high watch-through rate, and will promote your video for you.

This is the best way to get your YouTube channel started and get traction on Google, as well.

*Looking up specific keywords also works if you are a blogger looking for content to write about.

Technical Strategies for Videos

Nate says don’t stress about overall production quality, but rather, focus on content quality. You don’t need an expensive camera to do YouTube videos.

Lighting is the most important piece to think about when videoing your content. Simply film a selfie video facing a window, and as long as you’re delivering high-quality content, people are going to love it.

Nate plans his videos to be 10-12 minutes. Keep in mind, the longer people watch your video, the more YouTube will promote it.

Let your audience know beforehand what your video is about and what you’re going to cover. This tells your audience that watching through to the end is worth it.

And then, instead of summarizing your video at the end, direct your audience to another video that will be related to the topic of this video. Monetizing Your YouTube Channel

Ad revenue can become a livelihood but you need millions of views to earn big bucks from YouTube. Normally your YouTube income will just be the icing on the cake of your other incomes.

If you have a huge platform on YouTube and high-quality videos, YouTube will promote your videos because YouTube wants to make money, and therefore, you will make money.

It takes time, you have to be able to wait until you have a big enough audience to sell your products.

Once you have thousands of followers, and once you are a YouTube partner, you can get your website approved to be able to guide followers off of YouTube to your personal site for sales.

One-third of Nate’s links on his videos lead to his personal website, one-third go to other YouTube videos, and the final third lead to social engagement.

How Many Videos Per Week?

You can succeed on YouTube at a gradual pace of one episode a week.

However, YouTube does like it when you post five or more videos a week. Think about it; they want people to come back to the platform every day for videos.

Nate went from 500 views per day for one video a week, to 10K views a day for five-plus videos a week, in just four short months.

There are four ingredients to ensure that you get as many views as possible for your videos:

Keyword research
10-12 minute videos
A 45% viewer retention rate
Patience for 4 months

YouTube Thumbnails

Thumbnails have become more and more important because people see so many videos in a search result, and you want your thumbnail to stand out.

To figure out the best type of thumbnails to use, you’re going to have to test your ideas. TubeBuddy has an AB split test that you can use to see how your thumbnails are working comparatively.

Don’t repeat the title of your video in your thumbnail. Use that text to build curiosity and pique the searcher’s interest. The word "clickbait" can have both good and bad connotations, so use your text carefully and if you can deliver on your text, do it.

If you want to start a YouTube channel, let’s review what Nate talked about today:

Use keywords and do keyword research
Make tons of videos
Go for a length of 10-12 minutes
Optimize your thumbnail so people will be intrigued and click
Plan a CTA

Building a YouTube channel is strategic but it is not rocket science. You need the nuts and bolts in place and once you have a solid foundation, you continue to build, build, build!

Nate has a special offer for my Blogger Genius listeners; if you go to his website at Be The Hero Studios, you can grab his step-by-step blueprint for doing keyword research before filming.

Have you built a YouTube channel? If so, share your best tips and tricks with us. Let us know what has worked for you and what hasn’t.

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Read the podcast transcript for “How to Use YouTube to Successfully Market Your Business” TIMESTAMP

Intro
5:58 Can Beginners Compete With OG’s?
8:47 Creating Content With Keywords
13:35 The Power of Keywords for Gaining Traffic
22:31 Technical Strategies for Videos
29:12 Monetizing YouTube
36:42How Many Videos Per Week?
42:08 Thumbnails

TOP 4 TAKEAWAYS

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, so if you aren’t taking advantage of that to grow your business, you should consider starting a channel.
You absolutely must do keyword research before filming videos. Our favorite keyword research tool is SEMRush. (Do you have an affiliate link for SEMRush?)
Expensive equipment isn’t everything but lighting is, so film all your videos facing a window with daylight streaming in.
You won’t get rich quick on YouTube, but if you’re willing to be patient, it can become a valuable income stream.

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